Bartleby has a strange effect on the narrator, a lawyer who employs Bartleby as his scrivener (a person who copies documents). The lawyer increasingly falls under Bartleby's spell as he comes to feel sympathy and compassion for what he calls this "forlorn" man. The lawyer identifies with Bartleby as part of what is sad and lost in all of us as human beings.
When the lawyer hires Bartleby as his scrivener, at first he is delighted with the man's hard work and accuracy. But as time goes on, Bartleby's work habits change. He starts refusing some forms of work, saying he would "prefer not to."
As the lawyer understands, under normal circumstances he would have fired such an employee. But there is something about Bartleby that makes him pause and decide not to dismiss him. The lawyer writes:
Had there been the least uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner; in other words, had there been any thing ordinarily human about him, doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises. But as it was, I should have as soon thought of turning my pale plaster-of-paris bust of Cicero out of doors . . .
The lawyer comes to think often about Bartleby, who exercises an increasing fascination over him. He writes:
there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful manner touched and disconcerted me.
When the lawyer tries to find out more about his strange employee's past, however, Bartleby prefers not to speak. Once more, the lawyer considers firing him, but
Again I sat ruminating what I should do. Mortified as I was at his behavior, and resolved as I had been to dismiss him when I entered my offices, nevertheless I strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain if I dared to breathe one bitter word against this forlornest of mankind.
The lawyer eventually changes offices to try to get rid of Bartleby, who has started to live in his office, but it does no good. Eventually, Bartleby is carted off to an institution, but the lawyer continues to think about him obsessively. Bartleby, who refuses to do anything, adopts an utterly passive posture and eventually dies. The lawyer, who finds him mysterious, still wonders what the real story is. At the end of the story, he discovers that Bartleby once worked at the Dead Letter office in Washington, D.C, disposing of letters that never reached their destination. He speculates that seeing so much failed communication and human tragedy must have impacted Bartleby's psyche in a way that made it impossible for him to continue on with working.
Bartleby comes to stand in for all of humanity to the lawyer, representing us in our essential loneliness and isolation. Bartleby's impact on him is quite strong, causing the lawyer to meditate deeply and with melancholy on the meaning of life. Bartleby also helps the lawyer plug into his compassionate side as he tries, but fails, to help this fellow human being.
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